The present technology is related to the field of medical and industrial instruments used for access to a cavity or lumen and more specifically, in one embodiment, to vascular access within the body of a patient.
In today's medical field, many medical procedures require entry into a patient's blood or other vessel for purposes of accessing a desired treatment site, i.e. surgical, treatment, diagnostic. In order to gain access to the desired site, a sheath is usually advanced through the vessel. Once in place within the patient's vessel, various types of medical instrumentation can be fed through the sheath and positioned at the desired site so that the procedure may be performed.
To initially gain access to a particular site within a patient, a needle is used to puncture the patient's skin and gain entry to a desired blood vessel (blood vessel is used throughout for convenience and only as an example of different vessels that may be accessed). A guide wire is then inserted into a lumen in the needle and is fed into the blood vessel. The needle is then removed, with the guide wire being left in place.
A dilator/sheath assembly is then placed over the guide wire and advanced to a position inside the blood vessel. Once the guide wire and the dilator/sheath assembly are advanced within the blood vessel to the desired site, the dilator is removed. The guide wire and sheath are now used to introduce and guide medical instrumentation to the desired site.
As the above procedure is performed within a patient's body, instrument integrity is of concern. Malfunctioning or damaged instruments may, for example, cause tissue trauma, introduce unintended contaminants into a patient's body, or result in leakage of fluids. Accordingly, research and development for improving the integrity of medical instruments is an area of ongoing concern in the medical field.